


but the sun's been quite kind

by watchtheleaves



Category: Boy Meets World
Genre: I mean... obviously, M/M, Not Canon Compliant - Girl Meets World, Shawn is Autistic, everyone is gay! congrats, i usually know how to tag wtf is this, it takes place like a year or two after canon? idk, it's... So soft, just so you know, mentioned jeric, mentioned topangela, since it's shory, that's not a popular hc but it's My hc and i talk about his sensory issues in this so, this is for noel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25892095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watchtheleaves/pseuds/watchtheleaves
Summary: on a sunny july afternoon, life finds shawn feeling just happy.
Relationships: Cory Matthews & Josh Matthews, Jack Hunter/Eric Matthews (mentioned), Shawn Hunter & Josh Matthews, Shawn Hunter/Cory Matthews, Topanga Lawrence-Matthews/Angela Moore (mentioned)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49





	but the sun's been quite kind

**Author's Note:**

> this is for noel and noel only ! everyone else go home. it's almost 3 am, so i apologize if this makes even less sense than the rest of my works.
> 
> (ah, yes, another fic named after an elton john song. this title is from "your song", which is a very shawn/cory song, by the way)

Shawn remembers hating summer with the most profound passion. He doesn’t remember when exactly he transitioned from that hate to something that almost resembles love. Then again, that’s what has been happening to most aspects of his life: He wasn’t a tea person, a cat person or a _let’s watch The Princess Diaries and cuddle under this blanket_ person.

A lot of things in his life have changed from the second he let Cory in completely. Shawn wasn’t usually keen on changes, but he finds that he doesn’t quite mind these little shifts.

For example, he’s started to swipe boxes of fruit tea while doing groceries, and he’s started to look into cats near him instead of just dogs to adopt. And, well, no one can ever really say no to The Princess Diaries and a blanket—not when Cory is on the asking end. The transition is slow, smooth, but he feels it surely.

He doesn’t feel any sort of shift, however, with his feelings towards hot weather. One moment, he’s desperately trying to rub off the sensation that humid, sticky afternoons leave on his skin, and the next one, he’s wearing sleeveless shirts and even fancying himself a pair of sunglasses. Suddenly, Shawn Hunter has mastered the summer season.

It’s not that he has stopped feeling like the insides of the Vesuvius, or that the fabric of all his shirts feels any less like sandpaper against his skin. He figures that, instead, it has something to do with the fact that Cory loves summer.

Cory Matthews is an overall easy-to-love person. He loves cats, and tea, and teen comedies, and the feeling of sun rays against his cheeks and fresh air and dew on the grass. He likes to walk around with no particular purpose as much as he enjoys staying home with the comfort of a fan blowing refreshing air against him. He loves his friends and his family, and the way the mailman seems never to get his name right—it’s always either _Corn_ or _Coral_ , which he finds hilarious every time. Cory has a general passion for life that Shawn has admired for so long he doesn’t remember ever not feeling that way.

Just how Cory loves the world, he loves Shawn. Wholeheartedly, doubtlessly, like it was written in the stars that he did so. Maybe, that’s what makes him so easy to love back.

A ball hits him in the forehead before landing on his palms. Shawn startles.

“Hey,” he complains, looking around before quickly finding the owner of the throw: five-year-old Joshua Matthews stands proud with his forty inches of height. He hides his face behind his hands and giggles. Shawn softens—it’s only been a few months since the last time he got to spend time with the kid, and he already looks so much taller.

He catches himself before he can get too emotional and shakes his head.

“What’re you doing, buddy? What did I say about throwing things around?”

Joshua shifts his weight from foot to foot while he thinks. He purses his lips together and hums before saying: “It’s only okay when it’s at Cory?”

Shawn nods and hands him the ball back. Almost as if having been summoned, Cory is suddenly leaning by the doorframe that gives way to the backyard. He pouts and feigns offense, playfully glaring at Shawn and then his brother.

“Hey,” he protests but receives a ball in the head as the only response. Shawn bites his lip to quiet a laugh, and Cory looks back up to him, squinting. “ _You_ ,” he says.

And then Shawn is standing up from where he was sitting to get somewhere near the height of the toddler under his care, and Cory is meeting him halfway, and Joshua is covering his eyes and making mockingly disgusted noises at the couple.

Cory kisses him, light as a feather. Shawn levitates for just a second.

“Hey, you,” Cory repeats. His breath brushes against Shawn’s lips, and it’s equal parts of warm and fresh. There’s a hint of the iced fruit tea they shared an hour earlier. “What’s going on over here?”

“Nothing much,” Shawn shrugs. “Just looking over the little one. He’s restless.”

They’re home for the first half of summer break—Cory and Shawn, Eric and Jack, Topanga and Angela. Except Eric and Jack opted to visit Jack’s parents in New York, since their relationship seems to be meeting new levels of serious, and Topanga and Angela are spending one or two weeks at the Lawrence’s cottage right outside Philadelphia, so it’s just Cory and Shawn and the same house that has found them together for so long in their life.

Amy and Alan are visiting some forgotten uncle, so the house is theirs, and so is Joshua, by the kid’s request. An opportunity to spend a week with Cory and Shawn was paradise to him.

(There’s a special something to the bond between Shawn and Josh, and everyone knows it—it has something to do with the hospital, and the speech only Cory and Topanga got to hear from a remarkably lost Shawn to a remarkably weak Josh.)

So, a sunny afternoon of July finds Cory and Shawn holding each other in the Matthews’ backyard, and a kid is tugging at both their sleeves, impatient.

Cory looks down at his brother and then up at Shawn, and they do the thing where they talk without using words, and then Cory nods and picks Joshua up in arms.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says. Joshua giggles at being picked up, and he places both hands in Cory’s cheeks. “What do you say we go to the park, huh?”

Joshua starts to nod eagerly, then stops. Cory perks an eyebrow as the kid in his arms frowns and then pulls closer to him as if he’s about to tell him a secret.

“Can Shawnie come?”

It’s a mixture of the way the boy says _Shawnie_ , like Cory, and the way he thinks of him, like Cory. Shawn bites the inside of his cheek and thinks of how he’s exploring new territory: the love of a five-year-old boy, handed to him while he feels like he did little to deserve it.

He thinks he sees Cory melt a little before saying, sweet like honey: “Why, of course. You thought we would leave him behind?”

After a moment of thinking, Joshua shakes his head. Shawn’s chest flutters. The boy jumps from Cory’s hold and rushes inside the house as Cory exclaims after him, commanding him to find a pair of shoes and his toys. That gives them about five or seven minutes of intimacy, Shawn knows, because Joshua takes the process of picking toys very seriously.

His boyfriend turns to him and grins. “Hey.”

Shawn smiles back like a fool. “Hey,” he echoes.

Cory kisses him again, and a part of him wishes he’d never stop doing it. He wants to say something about how happy he feels, how full, how real. He forgets how words work—he’s lacking clarity, suddenly—so he doesn’t, in the end. Cory knows, anyway.

While Shawn lets Cory look at him like he holds the world, he allows his mind to wander to how a certain former-teacher could find them any minute. However, for once in his life, Mr. Feeny doesn’t come out. For five to seven minutes, it’s just them and the sun.

Then, Joshua comes rushing back with both arms hugging a pile of toys. Cory shakes his head.

“Josh, you can’t just bring them all.”

“I can’t choose,” he explains. “I like them all.”

Shawn grabs a pair of shoes from the pile of things and goes to put them on both of Joshua’s feet. He makes sure Joshua can see how he’s tying the laces because the kid loves to watch. When he resurfaces, Cory’s smiling at both of them endearingly. Shawn shrugs and sticks his tongue out, trying hard to kill the sudden seriousness of the moment.

“I’m not tying your shoes,” he says. Cory scoffs.

Joshua stuffs all toys in Cory’s backpack and then walks up to place himself in the middle of the couple, holding both Shawn and Cory’s hands. He jumps and starts to drag them forward.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” he says. Shawn laughs.

The park is as crowded as one would expect it to be on a sunny July afternoon, with families and friends on picnics and children from a wide range of ages running around. Shawn remembers the park very well, and he dares to say it hasn’t changed since the last time he visited, all those years ago.

They walk by the monkey bars, and Joshua lets out an excited yelp before letting go and rushing towards them. Cory laughs loudly at that—it’s only right.

While Joshua introduces himself eagerly to another five-year-old by the monkey bars (a girl with fiery red hair tied up in pigtails who seem to be more scared of him than anything), Cory and Shawn find a spot to sit on the grass. It’s equal parts of shadow and sunlight. Much like them, Shawn thinks.

He then thinks he doesn’t feel like much of a shadow anymore. Not recently, at least.

Someone pokes him on his ribs and then his cheek. He looks to his side and finds a smiling Cory Matthews, blinking at him.

“Penny for your thoughts?” He says.

Shawn shrugs, calm. “No thoughts. I just love this park.”

Cory softens even more, if possible. “You used to hate this park.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Said it was always too dirty and crowded.”

“Oh,” Shawn says, then hums. “I guess that’s changed, too.”

Cory nods, acting like he has any idea what Shawn means by _too_. Maybe he does, Shawn figures, since he always seems to know when it comes to him. They don’t say anything else for a second, and Shawn leans his back against the tree and his head on Cory’s shoulder.

They see three doves fly away from the playground. Joshua quickly follows, rushing towards them and laughing bubbly. Cory grins, sitting up straight and preparing himself for the impact, but Joshua jumps at Shawn, instead.

“Shawnie,” he says. Shawn sits up and looks at the boy, now trapping both his legs with his full weight as he shifts to sit correctly in his lap. “Can we get ice cream?”

He glances around, finding a stand a few feet away from them. He grins and says, “Yeah, ‘course, buddy. But you have to do one thing for me first.”

Joshua nods, and his eyes go wide with excitement when Shawn comes closer to whisper in his ear. He can feel Cory’s gaze on them, curious and loving. The boy listens to Shawn’s indications and then gasps, pulling back.

“But that’s a bad word!” He stage-whispers.

Shawn shakes his head. “You can say it to Cory. Especially if you’re doing it for me.”

The kid looks conflicted for a moment, but he weighs out his options and jumps out of Shawn’s lap quickly enough. He faces his brother, who watches intriguingly, and he stands up straight as if he’s about to give a monologue.

What he says is: “Shawn says you’re a poopyhead.”

He can barely keep in the laugh that’s born in his chest when he hears the words—how Joshua says them like he’s scared of the immediate consequences of even pronouncing it—, but the way Cory freezes, shocked and baffled, makes it too much for him. He’s shaking with laughter, and Cory’s eyes are on him, which only makes him laugh harder.

Joshua frowns at him and crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Don’t laugh, Shawnie.”

It takes him thirty seconds, but he pulls himself together. He sees the kid, the pout, and knows he’s being misread. “Oh, Josh, no. I’m not laughing at you. You did great.”

“Then, why are you laughing?”

“Yeah,” Cory says. “What’s so funny, Shawnie?”

He smiles disarmingly at Cory, then looks at Joshua and shrugs. “I don’t know. It wasn’t that funny. I’m just happy, I guess.”

Any remains of resentment wash away from Cory’s face entirely, and his expression changes. Shawn doesn’t realize he’s said something big—one of those things that make a moment a _moment_ , that turn a memory into a milestone. It’s only a little bit sad that being “just happy” is worthy of honors in Shawn’s life, but it is, and he’s just happy.

Cory glances at Joshua, now chasing a butterfly with his eyes, and then sneaks closer to Shawn to steal a quick kiss.

“I’m happy, too,” he says. As if it doesn’t read all over his face. Shawn grins.

Someone pulls at his hand, and Shawn is brought to his feet by the surprisingly-strong five-year-old. He shrugs grass and dirt from his pants before pulling his wallet out and letting himself be dragged along by Joshua towards the ice cream stand.

Cory looks at them, and his cheeks feel stiff from smiling.

He thinks he hears Joshua say: “I’m gonna say more bad words.”

To which Shawn responds with: “I don’t think your parents are gonna like that.”

And, at that, the kid says: “Why? It made you and Cory smile!”

Shawn looks over his shoulder, gaze meeting with Cory’s for a split second before looking down at the boy. He shrugs. “I can’t argue with that logic.”

Joshua smiles, content. “So, will you teach me more bad words?”

**Author's Note:**

> um. drink water! take your meds! stay home! wear a mask!
> 
> i'm @xesouI (capital i!) on twitter if you wanna watch me have daily breakdowns over characters from a 90s sitcom.


End file.
